Stuff

I woke up this morning with an overwhelming urge to write. Now, since I have committed to writing a 50,000 word novel in the month of November, you probably think I was happy about this.

I was not. And for one, very good reason. I didn’t have any interest in continuing on the story that I had started.

I think I mentioned that I had started writing a Western. I did this because I needed a quick, easy, and simple thing to write. As I pretty much grew up on reading westerns, I figured I would be fine.

I started writing, and things went OK. First off, I discovered that I really like dialogue. My characters were talking very well, amongst themselves. I was a bit concerned, however, that one of them was really trying to be funny. And he was making the others sort of funny, too.

Which isn’t a bad thing. Or surprising, maybe, as I look for funny things myself. But I don’t recall reading any funny westerns.

Then I thought, too bad. I’ll just Jackie Chan a western. You know Jackie. He takes something that is traditionally serious as a heart attack – martial arts movies – and he “bumbles” his way through them, fighting with an umbrella, two cups of flour, and a bottle of olive oil.

I can do that. In fact, the one fight scene that I wrote (and you must have action in a western) involved manure, a shovel, and a good one-liner.

So I continued. My characters, I thought, were OK, too. Strong leading man – think Tom Selleck from his Magnum days. But a really strong leading lady, too – think Charlize Theron as the evil queen from Snow White and the Huntsman. Now I have no problem with a strong leading lady. In fact, I began to think that she might end up saving the “hero” in the end.

All of which is fine, if it’s part of the plot.

Shit. Plot. The one thing I didn’t have. I had written more than 10,000 words, and I had no idea what the story was. There were, I think, some good scenes and witty banter, but nothing that was moving towards some conclusion.

Largely because I didn’t have a conclusion.

So … I woke up this morning, and I had a crystal clear idea of what I was going to write. I sat down at my computer this morning and banged out well over 5000 words by lunchtime. Without breaking a sweat.

My wrists ached like the wrath of Khan, however, and I think I’m going to have to invest in one of these ergonomic keyboard dealies.

I’ve learned a few good lessons from my first attempt:

I can write very quickly. This is good, and the discipline of sitting down to write has helped a lot. My word counts are improving steadily.

If you start something and don’t know how to finish it, it doesn’t mean that you suck. Or that you wasted your time. It just means that you have learned a different lesson. Like how to write in a hurry. Start something else and figure out how to use your “failure”, whatever that means, somewhere down the road.

Don’t give up. Just try a different track.

It’s good to know what the end game is.

So, I decided to write about my own life. Yes, I wrote about the cool – nay, awesome! – bike that my neighbor had. And about Grade One (I was so cute). And the potato bin. It was interesting and fun for me. I laughed out loud a couple of times, and I even had a tear or two as I remembered a particular kindness or friend.

I particularly enjoyed writing my disclaimer page.

And so, because it flows downhill, things were pretty easy today. And productive. We’ll see how it goes.

But, I’m in a bit of a pickle. I should be at (since it’s day 10) about 17,000 words. I’m back to 5,000. That means I need to write about 2250 words every day for the next 20 days. Not impossible, I have discovered, but I have quite a few things coming up in the next couple of weeks that will take me away from home. And from writing.

I’m thinking of this as a challenge, so, I’m pretty psyched to keep at it. I think I can do it.

Thanks for your support.

Ron

PS – By the way, there are 746 words in this post. Maybe I shouldn’t have wasted them.